lapnitnelav

Would being able to create various anonymous profiles with interests that are only loosely tied to you be considered less creepy?

I'm an industry insider and while yes, it's how I make money, I can't deny there are some creepy bits which should be a concern for all.

But unless someone comes up with a better revenue model, most of Internet is supported by the Ad money. Be it the big players such as Google or Facebook, or the many modest operations out there.

So we have to figure out a way to make it work, something that shouldn't be creepy but can still support the ecosystem.

"overwhelmingly positive"

While I don't doubt there's been many good things coming out of the release and growth of Facebook, if only for their contribution to the ecosystem, I think you might be hyping it quite a bit there.

Care to elaborate on your thought?

Yeah but it's a thin line to walk.

If you don't do it, then you let all the pseudo-science out there masquerading as real science, which is bad.

But if you overdo it, you feed into the distrust of proper science too, see Brexit and we're done listening to experts soundbite, or any of the anti-vax crowd.

I'm working on an internal tool for our micro operation (we're 2 folks) built with Flask and it was my main concern.

Turns out, leveraging Dokku and having the right files, ie a Procfile to bind your app to Gunicorn and pushing the repo to the dokku instance was all it took.

Granted, it's for internal use so downtime isn't that big of an issue.

All the money in the world can't buy your pride / dignity back, especially if some "embarrassing" evidence get out there.

It's something in the way people would look at you, talk about you, etc ...

If you combine that with the Streisand effect, there's no way a public figure can take this kind of hit and walk away unphased. It's very much human nature, and that's why Jeff's move is bold.

Not specifically a big fan of Uncle Jeff but gotta admit it takes some guts to publish such a thing.

Sneaky edit : I'm sure one could not ignore his massive balls on any of the selfies AMI allegedly got their hands on ;)

Such a great presentation that clearly highlights what's at stake in a way that's accessible to everyone and not just tech folks.

That looks cool, will probably give it a try.

Cheers.

Not to detract from your point but Nature itself is brutal. There's no mercy kill when a predator catch a prey.

Case in point : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpQmJ7UUNFQ >> Warning, this is not for the faint of heart. <<

I've worked in a slaughterhouse, doing the night shift cleaning up the mess before a new day begins, I know what's it's like. Overcrowded boxes full of chicken shitting themselves, getting hanged by their legs on a factory line before getting their throat sliced by a fast spinning blade. Not a pretty sight for sure and a sad way to go.

It's very unfortunate how the mass consumption of meat creates terrible living conditions for the various animals we breed for that purpose. But if we measure the scale of suffering, I think we're doing a bit better than nature.

And yes, by going vegan you do not contribute to that, I get it. I have huge amount of respect for people that live by their moral standards and stick to it. Yet this doesn't mean that the wilderness is some Disney fantasy and yes, for all intent and purpose, most animals out there in the wild are bound to have a gruesome end.

I'm not implying that we're doing animals a favour by sending them to a slaughterhouse, simply that this is the natural order of things. If you feel strongly about that and choose to not consume meat and such, great. As for me, despite what I've seen, there's nothing wrong with eating meat. The only thing I wish is a more humane breeding, and I'm happy to pay more for that.

I'm aware that it's slightly hypocritical because would there be an alien specie doing the same to us, I'd probably would have a different perspective on that. As it stands, I enjoy being an apex predator. May it last forever.

I could forgo meat although not easily, but cheese -as a French, that's a really tall order.

Yeah, I've had the same feeling the last 8 weeks or so, my phone is regularly spammed by FB's notifications about some random crap that is irrelevant to me.

I was discussing that with a friend and sure enough, within the minute, a FB notification about adding some random dude popped up.

Ah funny you mention that. Years ago I was doing tech support for a 3rd party ad management software mostly focused on Search (Google + Bing) but had also a FB part.

While digging into some discrepancy issues, I realised our own tracker was picking up way less clicks than what FB alleged. Across all the cases (a handful at best) I was involved in, this appeared over and over. I remember going back to our internal FB team highlighting that.

Never heard back from them and had too much on my plate to bother with it. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that picked up on that.

Let me indulge you. What is the most successful EUD tool?

The main issue with retargeting is that most advertiser go all-in with it.

Instead of being a (friendly?) reminder that "hey, want to check us out again?", it's more like "hi, you've seen this 25 times at least, you sure you don't want to click me?"

So they spend an awful lot of money on what is visual spam rather than being a bit more measured in their frequency cap.

Used to do a call center job for the unfamous EA.

Back then (and it still probably is), FIFA Ultimate Team was all the rage.

What's FUT : a bunch of e-cards of players to get from packages you buy or you trade with players.

You can spend 20 bucks but you can also spend hundreds, if not thousands to get your collection.

WivSansJs

Epilepsy warning required here.

Not to mention the many cases of abuses within charities, see a random example here https://www.charitywatch.org/ratings-and-metrics/cancer-fund...

McLuhan's on the new media https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeDnPP6ntic (starts at 2.45)

I relate to this so much. I work in one of those regulated areas (finance).

Your comment has given me a new perspective on what I consider a developer hostile environment.

So, in which group were you? The ones that left or the one that stayed?

Teams not collaborating is the giveaway.

TLDR : Fake news of children kidnappers roaming in India circualting on WhatsApp led to 2 young men passing by getting lynched.

The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind [1] comes to mind. It only takes one person to spark the masses.

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crowd:_A_Study_of_the_Popu...

Times change, what was the norm a few generations ago is gone, whether it's getting in as a low paid minion and move up the ladder or being able to afford a house at age 25 on a single income.

There are plenty of cases where if you factor in your expenses to go to a job, you actually get less on your bank account than getting your welfare.

If your business can't offer a salary that compete with a fairly low standard of living such as relying on "handouts" as you put it, then there's something wrong and yes it should be really hard for you to hire anyone. Yes there are some industries which are notable for being prone to that and that's usually why they also receive their own kind of handouts too.

This law sort of enforce it in a way (and beyond obviously).

I'm not US citizen nor a resident there so I have no horse in this race. But I do believe it's mostly a good thing

Looking forward to the army of automated drones patrolling around, checking thermal imaging to catch people in the act.

Cue hundreds of horny teenagers in dismay. /cynicism

Automation was always going to be involved sooner or later. This would just increase the rate of adoption.

This is what we (as an industry) do, we disrupt and automate things, so I don't understand why you're so concerned about it.

And as for work worth less than minimum, then yeah maybe it's not worth doing by a human anyway.

Yeah but how do you explain the decline?

Do the systemic problems that have always existed getting worse? New ones?

Any business large enough to have call centre like operations - and the cost-centre mindset that goes along - where people are underpaid and pressured to take as many calls as they can?

Not dissing on all affiliate marketing folks out there - whether it's the review website or similar professionals trying to make an honest living from the service they provide.

But affiliate marketing as a whole is one of the shadiest internet industry. The coupon thing is one of the many tricks in the book to get your cookie everywhere and earn $$ without providing any value.

There's an awful lot of fraud like that but somehow the benefits seems to outweigh it because the industry is still alive and kicking.

Having seen numbers for some affiliate channels, my guess is that it's probably grossly overvalued but people still buy into that because the numbers look good, from afar, especially if you compare them to Search or Social. But the pricing model (CPA > Cost per Acquisition / Conversion) is different so I guess both sides are fine with that.

It's a mouse and cat game that is the usual playbook between the "good guys" and "bad guys", as you'd see in security, pirating, etc ...

---

Also, this is hardly a secret but it's actually really hard to properly estimate the ROAS / ROI of advertising in general and most of it is like a black box.

You pour some money in, get more money out if you play your cards well. Maybe you nailed your strategy and execution, maybe you'd still have made the same money without advertising.

While cookie stuffing is nothing new in the wonderful world of Affiliate marketing, leveraging Amazon's force de frappe in this way is actually brilliant.

Not that I condone it but the sheer ingenuity can be appreciated.